Date | 14–20 October 2022 |
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Cause |
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Motive |
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Participants | Conservative Party MPs |
Outcome |
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Foreign Secretary Ministry and term Post-premiership | ||
In September and October 2022, the Conservative Party government led by newly appointed prime minister Liz Truss faced a credibility crisis. It was caused by the September 2022 mini-budget and a disorganised vote in the House of Commons over a parliamentary motion to ban fracking, ultimately resulting in the loss of support of Conservative members of parliament (MPs).
The mini-budget was a ministerial statement entitled "The Growth Plan" delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, to the House of Commons on 23 September. It was received negatively by global financial markets and ultimately led to the dismissal of Kwarteng on 14 October. In the following days, Truss came under increasing pressure to reverse further elements of the mini-budget to satisfy the markets and, by 17 October, five Conservative MPs had called for her resignation. On 19 October, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, resigned over a breach of the Ministerial Code following a disagreement with Truss over immigration reform; her resignation letter was critical of the government.
On the evening of 19 October, MPs voted on a Labour Party motion to create time to debate a ban on fracking in the UK, which was opposed by the government. It was unclear whether the vote was being treated as a confidence vote by the government, which confused Conservative MPs. The confusion was compounded by speculation that Wendy Morton and Craig Whittaker, respectively the chief whip and deputy chief whip, had resigned, and by allegations, later refuted, that some Conservative MPs had been manhandled in the division lobby.
Truss resigned as prime minister on 25 October, having announced her intention to do so on 20 October. Rishi Sunak won the ensuing Conservative Party leadership election unopposed to become party leader and prime minister. Truss was in office for 49 days, a shorter duration than the total for any preceding UK prime minister. [a]
Truss had been elected as leader of the Conservative Party on 5 September at the culmination of a seven-week process, [1] and was duly appointed as prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II on the following day. [2]
Political activity was greatly reduced during the period of national mourning following the death of the Queen, between 8 and 19 September. [3] [4]
On 23 September, [5] Kwasi Kwarteng delivered a Ministerial Statement entitled "The Growth Plan" to the House of Commons that was widely referred to as the mini-budget. [6] This prompted significant negative market reaction, including the pound sterling falling to a record low against the US dollar and a sharp increase in the cost of government borrowing. [7] [8] [9] On 14 October, Kwarteng returned early from meetings in the United States and Truss dismissed him as chancellor. [10] He was replaced by Jeremy Hunt, who said on 17 October that most of the measures in the mini-budget would no longer be implemented. [11]
According to The Daily Telegraph , there were at least five Conservative MPs calling for Truss's resignation by 17 October: Crispin Blunt, Andrew Bridgen, Angela Richardson, Charles Walker and Jamie Wallis. [12] That evening, Truss said she was "sorry for the mistakes that have been made", but added that she remained "committed to the vision" and would lead the Conservatives into the next general election. [13] However, this did not seem to calm the growing tensions in her party, with one Conservative MP remarking, “This is the first time I have ever heard a corpse deliver its own eulogy.” The following day Lord Frost, a Conservative peer, also called for Truss to resign. [14]
Truss met with Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, on 17 and 20 October. [15] The meeting on 17 October was said to have caused Truss to miss an urgent question by opposition leader Keir Starmer about Kwarteng's departure. [16] Truss's absence drew criticism from a number of MPs, including Starmer. Truss later appeared alongside Hunt during his economic statement to the House of Commons. [17]
Kwasi Kwarteng was dismissed as chancellor on 14 October, after 38 days in post, and he was succeeded by Jeremy Hunt. [18] [19] Chris Philp was also replaced by Edward Argar as chief secretary to the Treasury. [20] On 19 October, Suella Braverman resigned as home secretary, and she was replaced by Grant Shapps. [21] On 20 October, Truss stated her intention to resign as prime minister. [22]
Truss, as a former prime minister, is eligible to draw on the Public Duty Costs Allowance. This allowance can pay up to £115,000 per year towards reimbursement of the authenticated costs former prime ministers face in continuing to fulfil the public duties associated with being a former prime minister. [23] Keir Starmer said "She shouldn't take that entitlement. After 44 days she has not earned the right to that entitlement, she should turn it down". [23] Fact-checking charity Full Fact noted the commonly mis-characterised nature of the allowance, adding that it was not correct to suggest that "former prime ministers simply 'get' the money". [24]
I think it's a shambles and a disgrace ... I hope all those people that put Liz Truss into Number 10, I hope it was worth it ... because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary.
On 19 October Ed Miliband, a Labour Party MP, tabled an opposition day motion on the subject of fracking. [26] [27] Truss pledged as part of her leadership campaign to lift the moratorium on fracking, yet some Conservative MPs had expressed concern about the change as it went against their 2019 manifesto. [28] The motion was a Programme Order, which, if carried, would have bound the House to consider and hold a vote on a Bill banning fracking, under the rules and timetable set in the Order itself. As the motion would have granted the opposition partial control of the business of the House of Commons on certain days, the party whips strictly informed Conservative MPs to vote against it (a three-line whip). They were also informed that the vote would be treated as a matter of confidence. [28] [29]
As the day progressed, 10 Downing Street became increasingly concerned about the potential size of the rebellion among Conservative MPs and informed the climate minister, Graham Stuart, that the vote would no longer be treated as a matter of confidence. Although he subsequently relayed this to the House of Commons the whips' office were not made aware of the change, resulting in confusion and disarray among Conservative MPs. [30]
MPs must vote by walking through an aye lobby or a no lobby, and an unnamed Conservative MP described this part of the process as "chaos". In claims that were undermined by a subsequent Speaker's inquiry, [31] Conservative whips were accused of manhandling and bullying backbenchers into voting against the motion; Labour MP Chris Bryant said that he saw MPs "physically manhandled through the voting lobby", mentioning deputy prime minister Thérèse Coffey and business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg. [32] [33] [34] During the vote the chief whip of the Conservative Party, Wendy Morton, and the deputy chief whip, Craig Whittaker, were believed to have resigned. [35] Later that evening, the speaker Lindsay Hoyle tasked the Serjeant at Arms of the House of Commons and other parliamentary officials with investigating the allegations. [36] The motion was defeated by a vote of 326–230, with 324 Conservative MPs opposing it. [37] On 1 November, the investigation concluded that while the atmosphere had been "tense" during the fracking vote, there was no evidence of "undue influence" on MPs. [38] Charles Walker called the Truss ministry "a shambles and a disgrace... utterly appalling", commenting of its supporters that he had "had enough of talentless people" for whom "it’s in their own personal interest to achieve a ministerial position". [39] [40]
During Prime Minister's Questions on 19 October, Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, questioned why Truss had not resigned, to which Truss responded: "I am a fighter and not a quitter." [41] [42] The next day, Truss announced that she would resign. [22]
A YouGov survey of Conservative Party members published on 18 October reported that a majority of them wanted Truss to resign. Boris Johnson was the most popular potential replacement, followed by Ben Wallace, Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch, Jeremy Hunt and Suella Braverman. [43] [44]
As of mid-October, bookmakers were taking odds for the date of Truss's resignation. Bookmakers placed Sunak first in their list of likely Conservative prime ministerial successors, followed by Hunt, Mordaunt, Wallace and Johnson. [45]
On 11 October, The Economist published an article criticising Truss in which they compared the length of time she had control of the country to the shelf life of a lettuce. [46] On 14 October, the Daily Star began a live stream of a lettuce dressed as Truss to see whether she would resign before the lettuce wilted. [47] She did. [48]
On 19 October, after Suella Braverman's resignation, the lettuce was filmed with a plate of tofu to mock the statement she had made the previous day which attacked climate-protest groups as "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati". [49] The lettuce became well known; in an interview with Sky News, Labour MP Chris Bryant said that "the lettuce might as well be running the country, or the tofu". [50]
Christopher James Skidmore is a British former Conservative Party politician and author of popular history who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingswood in South Gloucestershire from 2010 to 2024.
Mary Elizabeth Truss is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. On her fiftieth day in office, she stepped down amid a government crisis, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. The member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk from 2010 to 2024, Truss held various Cabinet positions under three prime ministers—David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson—lastly as foreign secretary from 2021 to 2022.
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A list of events relating to politics and government in the United Kingdom during 2022.
The July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election was triggered by Boris Johnson's announcement on 7 July 2022 that he would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, following a series of political controversies.
The Truss ministry began on 6 September 2022 when Liz Truss was invited by Queen Elizabeth II—two days before the monarch's death—to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister of the United Kingdom. Johnson had resigned as leader of the Conservative Party the previous day after Truss was elected as his successor. The Truss ministry was formed from the 2019 Parliament of the United Kingdom, as a Conservative majority government.
Liz Truss's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 6 September 2022 when she accepted an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding Boris Johnson, and ended 49 days later on 25 October upon her resignation. As prime minister, she served simultaneously as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union.
On 23 September 2022, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, delivered a Ministerial Statement entitled "The Growth Plan" to the House of Commons. Widely referred to in the media as a mini-budget, it contained a set of economic policies and tax cuts such as bringing forward the planned 1% cut in the basic rate of income tax to 19%; abolishing the highest (45%) rate of income tax in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; reversing a plan announced in March 2021 to increase corporation tax from 19% to 25% from April 2023; reversing the April 2022 increase in National Insurance; and cancelling the proposed Health and Social Care Levy. Following widespread negative response to the mini-budget, the planned abolition of the 45% tax rate was reversed 10 days later, while plans to cancel the increase in corporation tax were reversed 21 days later.
The October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election was triggered by Liz Truss's announcement that she would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, amid an economic and political crisis.
On 14 October 2022, the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Star began a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of Liz Truss, who was appointed prime minister of the United Kingdom the previous month. This act followed an opinion piece in The Economist that compared the expected brevity of Truss's premiership to the shelf life of a head of lettuce, with the October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis occurring weeks into her tenure and leading many political commentators to opine that Truss's resignation was imminent. She announced her resignation as prime minister on 20 October 2022, before the lettuce had wilted; the Daily Star subsequently declared the lettuce "victorious" over Truss.
Rishi Sunak's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 25 October 2022 when he accepted an invitation from King Charles III to form a government, succeeding Liz Truss, and ended on 5 July 2024 upon his resignation. He is the first British Asian and the first Hindu to hold the office. Sunak's premiership was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the cost-of-living crisis, and the Rwanda asylum plan. As prime minister, Sunak also served simultaneously as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union.
The "anti-growth coalition" is a British pejorative term and political slogan used by former British Prime Minister Liz Truss during and after her premiership in 2022 against those critical of her policy agenda, particularly of the September mini-budget under Kwasi Kwarteng. It was used in an attempt to portray its targets, including the main opposition parties and environmental activists, as a coalition of interests opposed to the United Kingdom's economic growth, and to portray herself and her allies as pro-growth.
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